The Beautiful and the Damned

Published in 1922, Fitzgerald's second novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. The Beautiful and the Damned, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda in 1930, "was all true."

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

A natural storyteller and raconteur in his own right - just listen to Paddle Your Own Canoe and Gumption - actor, comedian, carpenter, and all-around manly man Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) brings his distinctive baritone and a fine-tuned comic versatility to Twain's writing. In a knockout performance, he doesn't so much as read Twain's words as he does rejoice in them, delighting in the hijinks of Tom - whom he lovingly refers to as a "great scam artist" and "true American hero".

Pride and Prejudice

One of Jane Austen's most beloved works, Pride and Prejudice, is vividly brought to life by Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl). In her bright and energetic performance of this British classic, she expertly captures Austen's signature wit and tone. Her attention to detail, her literary background, and her performance in the 2005 feature film version of the novel provide the perfect foundation from which to convey the story of Elizabeth Bennett, her four sisters, and the inimitable Mr. Darcy.

The Bell Jar

Read by the critically acclaimed actress Maggie Gyllenhaal. When Esther Greenwood wins an internship at a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther's life begins to slide out of control. She finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a suicide attempt as she grapples with difficult relationships and a society which refuses to take women's aspirations seriously.

To Kill a Mockingbird

'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.' A lawyer's advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the '30s.

Othello (Dramatized)

This widely studied play is one of the "best sellers" of the Shakespeare canon. This production is the sixth Shakespeare play in the series undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press.

The Great Gatsby (Dramatised)

This is a BBC Radio full-cast dramatisation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel, starring Bryan Dick as Nick and Andrew Scott as Jay Gatsby. The greatest book on the fallibility of the American dream, The Great Gatsby, a portrait of the Jazz Age in all of its decadence and excess, is by far the most popular classic in modern American fiction. Self-made, self-invented millionaire Jay Gatsby embodies some of Fitzgerald's - and his country's - greatest obsessions: money, ambition, greed, and new beginnings.

Wuthering Heights

The passionate and tragic story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff is one of the high points of nineteenth-century Romantic literature. In the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff, and in the wild, bleak Yorkshire Moors of its setting, Wuthering Heights creates a world of its own, conceived with a disregard for convention and an instinct for poetry and the darkest depths of the human soul in torment.

Here is the multi award-winning SmartPass study guide, with and without commentary options. This is a full-cast, unabridged performance with comprehensive commentary and analysis to allow any student to fully understand and appreciate the play. Meet literature's greatest villain in this tragedy, fuelled by jealous rage. Journey into the twisted mind of Iago, who freely admits, "I am not what I am", and truly get under the skin of this wondrous play.

The Grapes of Wrath

Shocking and controversial when it was first published, Steinbeck's Pulitzer prize-winning epic remains his undisputed masterpiece. Set against the background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and Californian migrant life, it tells of the Joad family, who, like thousands of others, are forced to travel west in search of the promised land.

Lord of the Flies

A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

In 1937, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight", For Whom the Bell Tolls.

A Clockwork Orange

In this 1962 classic, a novelistic exploration of modern crime and punishment, Alex is the 15-year-old leader of his gang of "droogs" thriving in the ultraviolent future as prophetically imagined by Burgess. Speaking a bizarre Russian-derived slang, Alex and his friends freely pillage and slash their way across a nightmarish urban landscape until Alex is captured by the judicial arm of the state. He then becomes their prized guinea pig in a scientific program to completely "redeem" him for society.

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Big Brother is watching you.... 1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair.

Dracula [Audible Edition]

The modern audience hasn't had a chance to truly appreciate the unknowing dread that readers would have felt when reading Bram Stoker's original 1897 manuscript. Most modern productions employ campiness or sound effects to try to bring back that gothic tension, but we've tried something different. By returning to Stoker's original storytelling structure - a series of letters and journal entries voiced by Jonathan Harker, Dr. Van Helsing, and other characters - with an all-star cast of narrators, we've sought to recapture its originally intended horror and power.

Ulysses

Ulysses is regarded by many as the single most important novel of the 20th century. It tells the story of one day in Dublin, June 16th 1904, largely through the eyes of Stephen Dedalus (Joyce's alter ego from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man) and Leopold Bloom, an advertising salesman. Both begin a normal day, and both set off on a journey around the streets of Dublin, which eventually brings them into contact with one another.

Jane Eyre

Following Jane from her childhood as an orphan in Northern England through her experience as a governess at Thornfield Hall, Charlotte Brontë's Gothic classic is an early exploration of women's independence in the mid-19th century and the pervasive societal challenges women had to endure. At Thornfield, Jane meets the complex and mysterious Mr. Rochester, with whom she shares a complicated relationship that ultimately forces her to reconcile the conflicting passions of romantic love and religious piety.

The Book Thief

When nine-year-old Liesel arrives outside the boxlike house of her new foster parents at 33 Himmel Street, she refuses to get out of the car. Liesel has been separated from her parents, "Kommunists", forever, and at the burial of her little brother, she steals a gravedigger's instruction manual, which she can't read. It is the beginning of her illustrious career.

Tender Is the Night

Set on the French Riviera in the late 1920s, Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character - lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.

The Kite Runner

Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of its monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him.

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal, a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss.

Animal Farm

Animal Farm is George Orwell's great socio-political allegory set in a farmyard where the animals decide to seize the farmer's land and create a co-operative that reaps the benefits of their combined labours. However, as with all great political plans, some animals see a bigger share of the rewards than others and the animals start to question their supposed utopia.

King Lear

The tragedy of King Lear receives an outstanding performance in an all-star cast led by Britain's senior classical actor, Paul Scofield. He is joined by Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, Harriet Walter as Gonerill, Sara Kestelman as Regan and Emilia Fox as Cordelia. This is the ninth recording of Shakespeare plays undertaken by Naxos AudioBooks in conjunction with Cambridge University Press, and is directed by John Tydeman. It was released to mark the 80th birthday of Paul Scofield in January 2002.

Publisher's Summary

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in the early 1920s, the American Dream was already on the skids. Originally based on the idea that the pursuit of happiness involves not only material success but moral and spiritual growth, the dream had by Fitzgerald's time become increasingly focused on money and pleasure - a phenomenon the high-living writer was only too familiar with.

The Great Gatsby is my favourite book, I have read it at least a dozen times. The audio book just makes it more real for you. You meet Nick Carraway, from the Mid-west in the 1920s, after he is back from WW1 he feels restless with the world, so moves East to be part of the bond business. Once he moves East, you hear about this Gatbsy character, that Fitzgerald wraps up in mystery and something gorgeous. Fitzgerald created the All-American Novel and it pure perfection. He writes about the Jazz Age, the flappers and hopeless love. You follow Nick with his summer in the East and what it does to the people around him. After this, you will never find a book as perfect as this one.

I have never read the Great Gatsby or any other book by F. Scott Fitzgerald so this audio-book was a fine introduction to the work of a great author. The voice-over was superb, although lacking in diversity when portraying multiple characters. I especially liked the use of effects when the narrator received a long distance telephone call.

I chose this reading of The Great Gatsby because (by contrast with some of the other recordings I sampled) the narrator sounded young enough to play Nick Carraway, who turns 30 in the novel.
However, I felt that Alec Sand made so many minor mistakes in the course of the recording that it became slightly irritating and I couldn't recommend it. In my opinion, there were for example some pauses in inappropriate places (e.g. between the adjective 'prominent' and the immediately following words 'well-to-do people') and some mistakes of emphasis ('ROOMS in the city' I thought should be 'rooms in the CITY', and e.g. 'God, I'm sophisticated' I thought had a false emphasis, as I thought did 'Who doesn't?' - when Nick asks who it is who doesn't want trouble - he means to ask WHO is being talked about, not to ask a rhetorical question with the emphasis on DOESN'T).
There are some straightforward mistakes, which I felt should have been spotted if there had been careful editing and correction (an extra 'even' had been added after 'don't' in 'We don't know each other very well... Even if we are cousins', and sometimes the narrator simply used the wrong word: 'irreverently' instead of 'irrelevantly', 'instance' not 'instant' and 'pre-emptory' instead of 'peremptory'!) At one point there was a total mispronunciation of a word: I can't now recall what the word was, but it was in sufficiently common usage that I found it very surprising that someone who had been chosen to record an audiobook would not be familiar with it.

'The Great Gatsy' lives up to its reputation as a 20th century masterpiece. By turns amusing, tragic, glittering and simple, Fitzgerald's vivid prose captures the moment at which youth and innocence mature into a sadder adult cynicism, not only for the narrator and the captivating Gatsby, but also for the Roaring Twenties.

I guess, its a good book and I enjoy it but the ending left me with a strangle feeling the world is darker.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Great Gatsby?

How the rich and powerful act like gods and do what the want and never have to deal with the consequences. How some people can manipulate and get what they want, using other people for their own gain with out thinking about others.

Any additional comments?

A classic and I understand why. Some of it feels true and accurate even in the 21st century, some of it feels like a ancient long lost time (and thank the creator for that). The language used makes you feel like you are inside a lot of different beautiful locations. Gives great depth to every character, something you will recognize if you watch the movie.

Overall a lovely story with a lot of darkness, a fact of life I guess and prorates the human condition very well. If you dont fight it you will become like some of the characters in the book.

I did not find the narrator as big of a distraction as the other reviewers, but he wasn't the greatest. That said, there is a reason that this book is a classic and for me, the content more then makes up for the so/so narration. For six bucks, you can't go wrong.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Nikki

New Berlin, WI, United States

23/03/10

Overall

"Decent, Not Great"

I would say that the narrator was a bit dry, which sometimes made it a little hard to keep paying attention. I found myself getting distracted a lot and didn't like it as much as I thought I would. That being said, never having read the classic, I am still glad I bought this book.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

John

17/11/09

Overall

"Travesty."

This reading is cartoonish and insults this great book. His voices reminded me of "Boys In The Hall" giving a comedy sketch routine of The Great Gatsby.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Renata

Sao Paulo, Brazil

22/12/11

Overall

Performance

Story

"wonderful descriptions"

Where does The Great Gatsby rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

this book could be among the top ones I have listened to so far.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

The book makes you imagine wonderful settings.

Any additional comments?

Very well narrated.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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